Fish Reports

Friday Feb 17, 2012 - Just a quick report. It was a last minute call to head out to the banks agan today. After another couple of days of strong winds, the forecast was at a level we felt it could be ok to head out. In fact the forecast winds and swell never really eventuated. A fast running tide was however in full force! This certainly impacted on the fishing techniques, but the results were once again pretty awesome! With just 8 people on board after 2 last minute withdrawals we still caught 5 large trevelley, 2 Snapper 1 excellent Cobia (aka King-fish as shown in our gallery) a couple of Moses perch and a few tuskies. (should I mention the "happy Moment fish and grinners that were also in full force? no, lets not ;-) ). 60 crab just added to an overall awesome day out once again with massive smiles on all those brave enough to have made the effort to turn up for the charter!

Saturday Feb 11, 2012 - WOW! I cannot start this fish report any other way. Listening to the radio conversations between the boats out on the water I was surprised at the lack of fish all of them were reporting. Our vessel, Crusader 1, had headed out the 20 odd miles to "The Banks" for the day. Well recognised as one of the best fishing grounds when on, its a lot of distance to travel when the fish have little interest in taking the bait. When our buys came back into range however it was apparent that our fishing marks are still delivering fantastic results! 110 good size fusilier (or BANANA FISH as they are more commonly known) for a start. Our boy Danny had a few comments made when he lost a sensational size Dolphin Fish only a metre or 2 from the boat. Most comments being directed at the fact he was of course persisting with his plastics rather than any of the 3 types of bait we had on board. We even had a good size shark caught by one of the customers. When alongside the boat it was decided that no-one wanted it on board, so it was cut free to roam the ocean once again. We also caught a good number of Parrot fish and Tusk fish. Unfortunately today the snapper were quiet (2 undersized were caught and returned) as were the popular red throat emperors - again a few just undersized had to be released back. Combine the fish caught with the odd trivially and bream as well as an excellent haul of spanner crabs, and the broad smiles on every one's faces were fully understandable as they carried off their large bags of fish and crabs to show off to those family and friends that had not joined them aboard. I will be uploading a few of the images taken of the day a little later. All in all I believe we are beginning to see the start of the abundant fish so common in the 2nd quarter of the year already.

Sunday Feb 5, 2011 - It's been a long time coming but the weather has finally, after almost 4 weeks of horrendous winds and seas, turnied for the better. Saturday was the first time we were able to venture out and although the Mooloolaba Bar crossing still presents some "interesting challenges and moments" the deep sea conditions are not far from perfect. The still substantial swell appears to be ensuring the fish are all in close proximity to the local reefs, wrecks and other outcroppings they call home. The bait fish which have been so plentiful of late are in far more sheltered waters and areas (plenty in the Mooloolaba Harbour for instance!!), and the fish seem eager to take on any reasonably presented bait on offer! We had 3 half day charters this weekend. Not common, but not really knowing what the conditions would be like, we thought it maybe a bit much to expect customers to be out on the water for 9 hours. We could not have been more wrong! Everyone commented on how pleasant the conditions are. Luckily the normally small numbers and sizr of fish caught on the short 5 hour trips were also not as expected. Every trip has yielded a fantastic haul of fish! The most common fish caught has clearly been Snapper (not that anyone is complaining about that!) but there have also been a good number of parrot fish, Tusk Fish Coral Perch and King Fish caught. Even a number of Red Emperor, just under size by the smallest of margin, but a great fish to catch in the more southerly waters.

Tuesday Jan 11, 2011 - We had a 7 hour (3/4 AM) charter out today. Mixed results with the passengers that were experienced in deep sea fishing doing ok, but those out for the first time struggling. The weather conditions, although pleasant enough from a comfort level, made fishing tough. The swell, wind and tide all combined in the same direction to make it difficult to hit the areas with the lines, and even for the fish to take the bait in time. Pilchards in particular did not stay on the hooks very long in the conditions, so most fish caught were through slymies (mackerel) or squid. It's days like this when a full (9 or 11 hour) day out makes a huge difference to the 3/4 day conducted, as the outer reefs work far better in these conditions in particular. Half and 3/4 days just do not allow enough time to get that far out of course.

All in all we ended up with 4 snapper, 4 parrot fish, a tusky, 2 hussar and 2 wrasse of legal size. About another 40 fish had to be thrown back as they were under the legal size limits. We also finished up with almost 80 Spanner crabs cooked and distributed between everyone. 

Sunday 8th Jan 2012 - The first of our Fish Reports! Welcome to the Fish n Crab Fish reports section of our site. Here we will try to update as often as we can, just to give some idea of what has been caught, how many and where. We hope this helps anyone looking at booking a charter with what can be expected on a given day. Just remember, its called FISHING. Not getting fish. Some days will always be better than others. Some people are simply better than others at catching fish. And of course (my personal favourite excuse for not catching any fish myself) some are LUCKIER than others!

Well we have had a lot of back-to-back fishing charters over the last few days. We have probably seen more large fish lost than caught, but still managed an excellent haul of fish over most trips. A 17kg Cod possibly being the highlight of Friday's charter. Everyone on board that day assured me that they had much larger fish hooked but were unable to get them aboard. Ah yes, some days the fish do win the battle (in my case most days!). As Brizzo (the skipper for that charter) actually brought the beast on board, once we were back in port, the crew cleaned and filleted it, and everyone interested was given a portion. There was even enough left after that to give yours truly a piece! YUM!

Today' we had a 3/4 day Morning Charter out with a totally full boat of passengers. 14 snapper, 1 (large) Cobia, 6 Coral Perch, 3 Hussar, 1 Tusk Fish and a few others I forget at this point.  All in all pretty well everyone walked away with a good feed of fish and a great day out on the magnificent waters off the Sunshine Coast. If there was any downside to the day it was that the normally nice addition of Spanner crabs we also catch on our charter had already been enjoyed by one or more of the local turtle population. Our crew tend to call the Spanner Crabs "turtle lollies", and on a nice clear day like today, they have little trouble locating our nets and helping themselves to pretty much every crab on them. Only a paltry 4 were left for us across 25 nets! Compare that with an average of 80 crabs each charter for the previous 4 trips! Ah yes, the wonderful world of fishing.